Guns on campus? Expect tragedy! Item From CNN.com, Not My Words!!

This is a discussion on Guns on campus? Expect tragedy! Item From CNN.com, Not My Words!! within the In the News: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly forums, part of the The Back Porch category; Editor's note: Amitai Etzioni is a sociologist and professor of international relations at George Washington University and the author of several books, including "Security First" ...

Guns on campus? Expect tragedy! Item From CNN.com, Not My Words!!

Editor's note: Amitai Etzioni is a sociologist and professor of international relations at George Washington University and the author of several books, including "Security First" and "New Common Ground." He was a senior adviser to the Carter administration and has taught at Columbia and Harvard universities and the University of California, Berkeley.

(CNN) -- Gun-friendly Arizona and Texas are among about a dozen states considering versions of bills to allow university professors and students to bring loaded guns into their classrooms to defend themselves against "gunmen."

Jack Harper, an Arizona state representative who introduced such a bill, argues, "When law-abiding, responsible adults are able to defend themselves, crime is deterred."

"It's strictly a matter of self-defense," said Texas state Sen. Jeff Wentworth, who is also promoting a bill to allow guns on campus. "I don't ever want to see repeated on a Texas college campus what happened at Virginia Tech, where some deranged, suicidal madman goes into a building and is able to pick off totally defenseless kids like sitting ducks."

The drafters of these bills seem to have an image of peaceful students, bent over their books, suddenly attacked by gunslingers who materialize from nowhere. They ignore that students can and do shoot people on campus.
[Bill drafters] seem to have an image of peaceful students, bent over their books, suddenly attacked by gunslingers.
--Amitai Etzioni
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It was a student at Virginia Tech in 2007 who shot and killed 32 people. In 2008, a former student killed five people and wounded 17 when he opened fire in a crowded lecture hall at Northern Illinois University. And a professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville is accused of killing three of her colleagues in 2010 after she was denied tenure.

This is hardly surprising. Students and professors are not much different from the rest of the population. Among every 1,000 adult Americans, 60 suffer from a serious mental illness. Some of them will seek appropriate treatment, some will commit suicide, some will resort to drugs -- and some will vent their anger by shooting people.

One might say, "But surely we will not give guns to these guys." A test that allows one to reliably determine who can be trusted with a gun and who cannot, however, does not exist. And if it were ever created, I expect the National Rifle Association and various state legislatures would strenuously oppose submitting millions of students and professors, or anyone else, to such a test before they could purchase a firearm.

Not that I want "stable" students to carry guns. I have used firearms in close-range combat, but only after extensive training. And I still saw quite a few of my fellow combatants miss their targets and wind up with their bullets flying all over the place. This also happened with more of mine than I care to admit. If students are going to fire at intruders in their classroom, I'll bet my last dollar that they will bring down more of their friends than they will gunslingers. As for the professors, I have spent a lifetime among them. Trust me: Most of them come from the gang that can't shoot straight.

Worse, long before anyone storms into a classroom, some students will use their guns -- when their anger boils over, when they have one drink too many or their girlfriend makes out with someone else -- to shoot someone. And then there are those who die from an accidental firing of a gun -- on average, more than 700 Americans died each year from gun accidents between 1999 and 2007.

What should be done? Make guns less accessible, not more.

A well-known slogan of those who favor guns is, "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." But those nations that exercise much more control over access to guns have much lower levels of killing than those countries in which guns are freely available.

One study examined violence in 23 high-income countries and found that the firearm homicide rate was nearly 20 times higher in the U.S. than in the other countries, all of which have stricter gun control laws than the U.S. America has more firearms per capita than the other countries, more handguns per capita, and has the most permissive gun control laws of all the nations. Among the 23 countries, 80% of all firearm deaths happened in the United States; 86% of women killed by firearms were U.S. women; and 87% of all children up to 14 years old who were killed by guns were U.S. children.

The friends of guns argue that even if you took away all guns, people would still kill each other with knives and wrenches. However, attackers armed in this fashion can be much more readily subdued than those with guns. And no one can go to the top of the University of Texas clock tower and kill 16 people with a knife or wrench. Nor could Seung-Hui Cho have killed 32 people and injured 18 others at Virginia Tech with a knife instead of two handguns.

I have a hard enough time with students who bring their cell phones to their classes. If they bring guns, they better check them at the door, or I may be forced to arm myself and try to outdraw them when I see one of them reaching for his holster.

It's the same old argument over and over again... those that present it fail to realize that disarming the law abiding simply makes them easy prey for the law breakers. It does NOTHING to prevent the law breakers from acting.

"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
You are not paranoid if They are actually out to get you, however, They probably are not and you probably are.

Grasseater // Grass~eat~er noun, often attributive \ˈgras-ē-tər\
A person who is incapable of independent thought; a person who is herd animal-like in behavior; one who cannot distinguish between right and wrong; a foolish person.See also Sheep

Just another 1 sided completely biased article with only opinions, misleading "facts" and misleading "statistics" from CNN. Next it will be on MSNBC. It's a shame that news networks have to promote their agenda and never show the real facts and statistics behind legal gun owners. They never present the fact that our armed forces that protect our nation with guns, explosives, tanks, fighter jets, bombers, ect. consists of ...as they put it... "kids" who are mostly 18-21. The general non-carrying public simply has no idea about how many of their neighbors and passer-by's are carrying weapons. Why? Because the people who are legally carrying do not break the laws, and are not the ones committing the crimes, nor are they shooting innocents, as the writer of the article claims - without any evidence, statistics, or facts to back up those claims. ...Because there are none.

I get tired of reading the same arguments by the same ID10TS! There are already many colleges and universities in the US that allow CC and nothing has happened, but at Virginia Tech where CC was prohibited a terrible massacre happened. Therefore, gun control at colleges and universities is nothing but a "feel good" theory that in real life does nothing but leave the innocent unprotected.

If you think about it, the worst massacres and shootouts in the US have always happened in "gun free zones" such as Schools (Columbine High School in Colorado and Red Lake High School in Minnesota), Universities (Virginia Tech, University of Texas and Northern Illinois University), Banks (famous Bank of America shootout in Los Angeles), political events (Tucson shootings in Arizona), post office (Edmond post office massacre), restaurants (San Ysidro McDonald's massacre in San Diego and Luby's massacre in Texas), malls (Trolley Square Mall in Utah) and hospitals (John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore).

I don't think that concealed carry would prevent such incidents, but I guarantee you that it would save many lives because the perpetrator would be taken out quickly by an armed citizen.

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. --- Will Rogers --- Chief Justice John Roberts : "I don't see how you can read Heller and not take away from it the notion that the Second Amendment...was extremely important to the framers in their view of what liberty meant."

idiots one and all that believe this crap
Texas CHL holders can bring 'em on campus (under law, but maybe not school policy) but just not take 'em in the building.......I guess the guns in the parking lot have never decided to get out of the car and go inside....or none of the CHLs have gone on a shooting rampage

my wife teaches at a college and has to lock up her G26 in her car but takes in her taser, OC, and a knife, she would definitely be packing if this passes this time in Texas

side note.....2 years ago the college did a little seminar with the faculty on emergency drills including tornado, fire, and shooter/bomb/etc.
For the shooter part they essentially told them to either get out or hide under their desks/in closet/etc.......
They actually had them sitting in chairs in the room and had some random people walk in/out of the room and one of them at random raised their hand as if they had a gun, began 'shooting' and had people react for practice (running/hiding/etc)
When it was my wife's turn up front, the "shooter" started and she raised her hand as if she had a gun and said in a loud voice 'bang bang bang bang bang' and the 'shooter' stopped. The campus police, other faculty, and 'trainers' all stopped and looked at her and she put her 'gun' in her hip holster.
They asked her what she was doing and she said "what I'd like to do if someone came into the building and started shooting."
Some understood, some were shocked. Nonetheless, they continued the practice.
Another funny part: their new building has panic buttons in the classrooms that go straight through as a panic alarm to get the police en route.....and these buttons are located at the back of the room....right beside the door to the classroom where the BG would be entering....and teacher's podiums/desk/computers are at front of room.
Brilliant

Amitai Etzioni is not really an American. He spent the first 27 years of his life living in Germany, Greece, and Israel. He became a citizen of both Germany and Israel, before he became an American citizen.

He was not born in the USA, and thus was not raised with American values.